waiting – Hello

I Might Be An Ecoterrorist in Mexico.

This is the reason people hate blogs: I’m getting ready to talk about myself, and no one even asked me to.

Sometimes we go through these spectacular seasons, like living in the land of Mardi Gras, having daily coffees and margaritas and bagels and shrimps and po-boys; becoming a scholar, trained by all the best trauma & Disaster Mental Health people around— even if they don’t actually lecture you, but start out their year on sabbatical, which leaves you staring at theories of attachment slides from the 60s, but whatever. You stumble upon an accidentally perfect international project to culminate your learning experience, and it happens to be in Belize, your fave, with all your favorite people, and you are sort of forging the way for this kind of work there, and you feel a tiny bit like floating because the project was executed so flawlessly with such a kind and encouraging supervisor. And you come home to a two-week graduation festival/margarita marathon with free dinners and parties and regalia and sleepovers, and you walk away from New Orleans with a diploma in one hand and a certificate in the other hand—I mean, so what if you ran to the LBC for your big congratulatory reception through the rain to find four stale pieces of cheese and two hundred confused family members? (Tulane was sorry, they dropped the ball: would your family consider coming back for another reception? We promise cookies this time.) It doesn’t even phase you. Your family’s there, your best friend is on your one side, and your boyfriend is looped through the other arm, and two weeks later, at the top of the Hancock building in Chicago, at dusk, in the snow, he proposes. Seriously. A spectacular season. It doesn’t get any better.

Then you come home and move into your dad’s attic. Although, to be fair, he did clear out a lot of drawers and squares of closet space to be the most accommodating. And you’re not actually living in the attic. All your stuff is up there, but you have a nice cozy bedroom on the main level. You start the job search. You! The best most awesomely trained Master Social Worker with the best resume in the world, straight out of New Orleans with your shiny new diploma and your new fiancé and your new city—Madison WI, of course, which you prayed and prayed and prayed God would help you love. And he did. You love it. So you start applying. The first place contacted you way back in Belize, so you go though two rounds of interviews with seven board members, including an hour-and-a-half role-play while they watch you through a two-way mirror, and they say, “We’ll let you know by the end of the week.” Two months have passed.

You apply for more jobs—part time, full time, lots of types, lots of interviews, lots of blasted role-play, lots of promising contacts, lots of people affirming your resume and experience despite your age, which is great because your smile is getting a little droopy, and you’re starting to wonder if Tulane lied to you. But nothing materializes.

So you go home. Or, really you feel like you leave your new home to go back to Indianapolis: land of boring familiarity with grey winters and no fiancé (not to mention a super bowl loss to your OTHER city), but a curious job opportunity. You didn’t apply for it. It found you. Before you know it, you’re sitting in a second-round interview with an unexpected chance to be the Social Worker at a level 1 trauma center, and the option to pick up shifts at the children’s hospital you always wanted to work for. It’s a dream. EXCEPT IT’S IN THE WRONG CITY! You’re like, “Hello, God? Remember that part about how I’m supposed to be in Madison? Wrong hospital. Call Meriter or UW or something. If I’m good here, I’ll be good there, too.” God’s plugging his hears & humming like, “I can’t heeeaaaaarrrrr youuuu….”

In the meantime, fiancé gets an opportunity to go to Haiti with an international organization and a team of PTs. Your joint dream has always been to find a way do these types of things together! This is perfect. The two of you put together a proposal explaining the need for a Disaster Mental Health worker on the team and list your skills. The agency, to your surprise, believes you, and they schedule an interview for the next morning at 11am. The hospital agrees to give you the six weeks off to go. You wink at God and say, “Okay. Okay God, I get it. Yep, this is it. This is better. We must be supposed to go to Haiti.”

You and fiancé spend the weekend weighing out the costs, benefits, problems and solutions of leaving for 6 weeks before a wedding in 4 months. You don’t really trust yourself making huge, life-altering decisions, so you’ve been praying all along that God will only open the door you’re supposed to walk through, and so far you haven’t had to make a decision. So, in the same way, you promise that if the Haiti door opens, you’ll walk though it. But if it doesn’t, you’ll trust the provision.

The door doesn’t open. You glare at God.

You’re disappointed for you, and for fiancé. You realize with the Haiti door closed, and the Madison door closed, you’re back to the attic. (Which is fine, there’s nothing wrong with dad’s attic, if he’s reading this. You have lots of food here and free laundry and water aerobics on Wednesday nights!) But you feel exhausted from stacking up every possible opportunity and then starting to build a life around each option, attempting to get a head start on every possible thing. On top of that, you did hot yoga and almost died. You really feel, physically and metaphorically, like every single thing in entire world is flowing in the opposite current you’re trying to walk through.

You don’t understand why God isn’t helping. You thought you were clear with your order. Obviously God didn’t write it down when he was at your table…

Then you read this, by Donald Miller (A Million Miles in a Thousand Years):

A while back I was working on a novel about a performance artist-turned-ecoterrorist. I never published it because, well, it was about a performance artist-turned-ecoterrorist, and I couldn’t exactly find a market for the story.

I’d get up every morning and make my coffee and toast, I’d put my laptop in a backpack, and then I’d walk… I’d create my stories while I walked, thinking about what I wanted my characters to do, what I wanted them to say, and how I wanted them to throw headlong into whatever scene was coming next. By the time I got to my desk, I’d had plenty of time to plan whatever was coming in the book.

But stories are only partly told by writers. They are also told by the characters themselves. Any writer will tell you characters do what they want. If I wanted my character to advance the plot by confronting another character, the character wouldn’t necessarily obey me. I’d put my fingers on the keyboard, but my character, who was supposed to go to Kansas, would end up in Mexico, sitting on a beach drinking a margarita. I’d delete whatever dumb thing the character did and start over, only to have him grab the pen again and start talking nonsense to some girl in a bikini.

And as I worked on the novel, as my character did what he wanted and ruined my story, it reminded me of life in certain ways. I mean, as I sat there in my office making my worlds, and as my characters fought to have their way, I could identify with them. I was also that character fighting God, and I could see God sitting at his computer, staring blankly at his screen as I asked him to write in some money and some sex and some comfort [and some job in some city].”

Maybe I’m the ecoterrorist in Mexico. Who knows.

But I accepted the job at the hospital. Translation: I accepted three more months away from fiancé and the nights & weekend shift. I’m closing both eyes and crossing my fingers that a loving author is writing something perfect for the two of us…

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Fresh

I had some hilarious and insightful ways of recounting the consistent inconsistency of water and electricity in the village, but after 2 days of temps in the lower thousands and no electricity or water, I am fresh out of jokes. And by fresh, I mean not fresh at all. Hot and sweaty and miserable. The water is on for a couple of hours in the morning, and a couple of hours at night. But the night water is a crap shoot, because when it comes on, every one in the village rushes to shower or cook dinner or wash dishes, which leaves one drop per 25 minutes in our little faucet. We walk around all night asking each other, “Is there water yet?” and when the water is on, “Is there pressure yet?”

You know me. I love hot weather. I love Belize. I’ve done this before, many times, and weathered fairly well. But for some reason this time I just can’t cool off. Every day they say, “Today is hot Brooke.” And I say, “Yes, and yesterday was hot.” And they say, “But today is extra hot, Brooke. It’s not usually this hot.” And I just nod, thinking every day feels the exact same hot to me, and I just have this god-given need to strip everything off and sit in front of the fan naked. But then there’s the problem of electricity. We’ve had blackouts in the evenings. Which means in addition to no water, there is also no fan. Which is why I haven’t been sleeping, which is why my immunity is down, and I guess, why I can’t keep any food in me. Or maybe it was the street tacos and papaya juice? I don’t know. I am on a solid diet of soup and oats until further notice.

As for my job, every day I learn a little more about patience, waiting and flexibility. Monday was really profitable: meetings were held, trainings were scheduled, plans came together, clients assigned, letters written, learning goals established, the right people answered the phones at the right times, and the day was full of shade and fans and productivity and calls from boyfriends and moms, and tomolitos for dinner. There was lots of smiling and motivation and hope and excitement. Tuesday, however, I stared at a wall. Then walked from empty building to empty building up and down that giant hill. It’s like everyone in the city got together and agreed to disappear. At the end of the day, 6 hours later, the only tangible thing I could recount having been accomplished was a uniform found for a girl who needed to start school Friday. I suppose for that little girl, Tuesday was a good day. For me, no. By the time I realized nothing was happening and no one would be in the office, I had missed the 1 o’clock bus. The next bus was at 4 o’clock. So I sat and walked and sat and walked for 3 hours and then caught the bus home—which, you should know, always adds 4 layers of dust to sweaty skin, which, you already know, may or may not be washed off when those 8 drops of water come at 7:30. You get the idea. They tell me every day, “Life in Belize is hard, Brooke”. Usually I reply with something like, “Yeah, but you have great social capital or Yeah, but the weather is nice, or Yeah but your limes are delicious.” Last night I nodded and said, “Yes. Life in Belize is hard.” Inside I was thinking: that stupid lime tree that gives such delicious limes pricked me and we can’t get the thorn out.

Sigh. Sorry. I guess I’m kind of complainy today. How about some pictures?

(As if on cue. No pictures on my flash drive. They’ll have to be on the next post!) Monday is Independence Day in Belize. They’ve asked me to judge the parade on Friday…

Brooke? You look like a beggar.

A. I take the 8 o’clock bus every day, and my agency doesn’t open until 9 or 10 or whenever the first person arrives. Lucky for me, an internet cafe is right down the hill, which is why I keep bothering everyone with blog posts. I can only sit on a stoop in the sun for so long before I go pay $2.50 for my hour in the shade with a computer. The same thing happens at lunch, and so I have made friends at the Ministry of Human Development, because they have fans. They are also at the bottom of the hill. The long, hot, steep hill. “You will reduce!” they say of me walking up and down that hill all day long.

B. I forgot to tell you this last time. I have been over the bus routine several times with the family I am staying with and others in the village. I know what time the buses come. I know where to stand. I know where to get off. I am all set. So Monday I felt fairly confident in my bus-catching skills. I woke up an hour early and took my time cooking oats, packing my lunch, picking out my first day outfit, loading my bag for the day, etc. and had everything ready to go by 8 o’clock for the last bus into town. I stood by the door looking far into the distance for that bus. I had seen the 7 o’clock bus pass and the 7:30 bus and both 7:45 buses. Mine would be next. Richard walked out sleepy-eyed and said: Brooke. What are you doing? It is only 7 o’clock. I looked at my watch and realized I was looking at the CST setting. I was an hour early.

(The funny thing is that when the 8 o’clock bus actually came, I was talking to Antonia and almost missed it. She saw it pass behind me a couple of minutes early, ran outside and yelled “Boyeee!” and the bus came to a halt down the road. I had to run after it.)

Also, when I take the 4 or 5 o’clock bus home, many of the high school students take the same bus, so I wasn’t surprised to hear “Brooooooky!” from down the street while I sat on a stoop by the bus lot. Shawn, who likes to think he is one of those extra-cool versions of 16, shook his head and laughed at me from way up the hill. He sat down next to me, which was nice because I had spent all day waiting for people that never came. I was tired, hot and out of water. He said, “Do you want to go on the bus, Brooke? You look like a beggar.”

And here’s the worst part. When I got on the bus, Bryon said: Brooke! A strange thing happen last night. I neva see wah tornado in all of Belize, but last night a tornado came, right here da Cayo! I froze, and vaguely remembered a sleep-talking-walking incident from the night before wherein, during a huge storm, I shook Inez awake and tried to make her get under the bed because in my sleep a tornado was coming. She laughed all morning and told everyone at school. When I got off the bus, they yelled out the window: Brooke, be careful because an earthquake will come tonight at 6 o’clock, and hail will fall from the sky!

We’ve been laughing about that for three days.

I met my supervisor this week, and she was grrrreat. She works for the Ministry of Education and is the only School Counselor in all of Cayo! She seemed worn out just talking about all the need in the district for only her to attend to. I am looking forward to learning from her and traveling to different schools and homes. One boy, she said, was selectively mute. She said no one knew how to make him talk, so people hit him over the head and yelled in his face. They wanted to put him in the special needs program. But she went to his home a few times to play simple games with him like tic-tac-toe, and then progressed to snakes and ladders with the family, and the boy was talking within weeks. She is still assessing what caused him to stop speaking in the first place, but her work seems interesting and never-ending, and she has been very welcoming.

As for the shelter, I spent 4 hours yesterday talking with 3 ladies who’d been through the shelter and are now volunteers. Their stories are hard to hear, and the more I hear, the more depressed I feel about gender roles. Even among well-respected, high-functioning families. Three times today I heard mothers telling their daughter, “No one is allowed to hit you. You have a right…” because the norm in some houses is that they don’t have a right—so much so that many girls have to be taught NOT to tolerate abuse.

In other news, I have not instituted jump rope hour at the Flowers like I promised. It’s just too hot. I really can’t waste clothes on things like exercise :)

Waiting never prospers.

The thing about patience is, I don’t have it.

My brother said they weren’t planning to call anyone until after Lily was born.

(I took that to mean hurry up and get to the waiting room the second Jess is admitted.)

I resisted that urge all night.
I resisted it all morning.
At noon, I packed up a day’s worth of entertainment and headed for the hospital, sort of expecting to see her whole immediate and extended family, and the neighbors and the Target cashier and the old guy down at the bike shop, and, generally, everyone except me.

I parked and stepped up to the elevator with my little “hello sunshine” onesie in hand, and when the door opened, I was face-to-face with some lady holding two giant overflowing gift bags and a blue overstuffed human-sized teddy bear. I sighed and pressed the button. She had probably been invited.

I followed her to Labor and Delivery. The desk attendant said we had to have an access code to get up to the waiting room. What are hospitals coming to these days? The other lady whipped out her code and was on her way. For me, they had to call the room, make sure it was okay, and then Bryan had to meet me at the elevator.

I stepped off the elevator, rounded the corner and there he was. I laughed, dropped my bags, and told him I just couldn’t help myself. Like any good brother, he said it was okay, and then he led me to the waiting room. Which was empty. I mean, not a single other person in the room. Turns out, when he said they weren’t calling anyone, they actually weren’t calling anyone.

He said it would be a while, that it could even be another whole night. I just smiled proudly at my resourcefulness and pulled out my handy computer and stack of magazines. “I’ll be fine,” I told him. “Don’t worry about me.”

We talked for about 20 minutes, which was nice, and then he went back to Jess, who had just received her epidural.

(Let the record show, I was first.)

So… now that we’re all just sitting here in the waiting room, what should we talk about?

Oh! I know, let’s play with the camera.

Here is me normal.

And, me without my V8

Without my chin

With extra chin

Before my nose job

After my nose job

With no teeth

Cross-eyed

Before a date…

…with myself

Double Wide

Extra Long

So, the intake receptionist keeps sneaking peaks over her computer, and I don’t want to be escorted to the psych ward. I think I’ll quit taking pictures of myself and cracking up at what appears to be nothing.

How about the Belizean Cuisizean party? It was a hit! The whole team came (minus, like, 2 people) and we had a great afternoon eating garnaches and telling stories. Although, packing up and walking out of the house felt like closing the door on a very significant and meaningful chapter in my life. Hopefully there is an encore. Like, in November.

Pictures of the day:

Note. It might appear as though my shirt says “hell” but it actually says, “hello” which I thought was appropriate for a welcome home party.

Lisa & Denise: the CFI peeps running the show while I was there